,
I'll come back to you."

"How soon?"

"How can I know that now? But it will be a long time."

He drew a long breath and got up. All the joy had gone out of the summer
night for him, poor lad. He glanced down the Street, where Palmer Howe
had gone home happily with Sidney's friend Christine. Palmer would
always know how he stood with Christine. She would never talk about
doing things, or being things. Either she would marry Palmer or she
would not. But Sidney was not like that. A fellow did not even caress
her easily. When he had only kissed her arm--He trembled a little at the
memory.

"I shall always want you," he said. "Only--you will never come back."

It had not occurred to either of them that this coming back, so
tragically considered, was dependent on an entirely problematical going
away. Nothing, that early summer night, seemed more unlikely than that
Sidney would ever be free to live her own life. The Street, stretching
away to the north and to the south in two lines of houses that seemed
to meet in the distance, hemmed her in. She had been born in the little
brick house, and, as she was of it, so it was of her. Her hands had
smoothed and painted the pine floors; her hands had put up the twine on
which the morning-glories in the yard covered the fences; had, indeed,
with what agonies of slacking lime and adding blueing, whitewashed the
fence itself!

"She's capable," Aunt Harriet had grumblingly admitted, watching from
her sewing-machine Sidney's strong young arms at this humble spring
task.

"She's wonderful!" her mother had said, as she bent over her hand work.
She was not strong enough to run the sewing-machine.

So Joe Drummond stood on the pavement and saw his dream of taking Sidney
in his arms fade into an indefinite futurity.

"I'm not going to give you up," he said doggedly. "When you come back,
I'll be waiting."

The shock being over, and things only postponed, he dramatized his grief
a trifle, thrust his hands savagely into his pockets, and scowled down
the Street. In the line of his vision, his quick eye caught a tiny
moving shadow, lost it, found it again.

"Great Scott! There goes Reginald!" he cried, and ran after the shadow.
"Watch for the McKees' cat!"

Sidney was running by that time; they were gaining. Their quarry, a
four-inch chipmunk, hesitated, gave a protesting squeak, and was caught
in Sidney's hand.

"You wretch!" she cried. "You miserable little beast--with cats
eve